Why is casual racism/sexism more accepted in video games than other forms of media (these days)?

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just another face in the diverse crowd

by which i mean to say that while a middle aged white guys opinion (mine included) isn't invalid, i would be interested in reading a few pieces from the pen of that diverse crowd of non middle aged white guy gamers who look at this situation any other way than "yeah, 'gamer culture' is a cesspool"

by which i mean to say GAMERS ARE NOT THE AGGRIEVED PARTY IN THIS FUCKSTORM

That article somehow manages to 'cover' the recent brouhaha without actually discussing gender, sexism, misogyny, death threats, Sarkeesian or Quinn. Kinda, uh, weird.

Also manages to attribute quotes to "Gamasutra’s Keza MacDonald", but if you follow the link it's a blog post which clearly states "The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company." Which is a tiny detail, but if you're writing a lolgamejournalism article at least try and get the basics right.

by which i mean to say GAMERS ARE NOT THE AGGRIEVED PARTY IN THIS FUCKSTORM

i disagree. gamers are the aggrieved party. anita sarkeesian is a gamer. zoe quinn is a gamer.

and like, yes, i'm being pedantic but if you're going to ignore my point forks

#notallMordys

mordy... are you... deliberately ignoring that the mainstream majority video gaming world out there - from retailers to developers to advertising to websites and so on and so on and so on are 100% aimed at the specific gamer demographic we're talking about here

i'm not ignoring it at all. i'm questioning whether some of these memetic terms, 'death of gamers,' or just 'gamers' in general as referring to the most banal audience for the AAA video game industry, are descriptive or even useful.

dude, I'm not ignoring your point; in the essay you just posted sarkeesian and quinn are emphatically NOT gamers, they're the journalists and industry that are antagonizing presumably "real" gamers

also I'm gonna suggest that you consider that taking the "let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater" view on gamergate is a lot like taking the "well why did they take naked pictures of themselves anyway" view on the fappening: while you may well have a legit point to be made, you're aligning yourself with the worst possible people and intentionally overlooking all that groups immensely dumbfuck philosophies

like i don't know how "gamers" v. "SJP" became the rhetorical context for this debate - at least apparently in the rhetoric used by game journalism and brought onboard to ilx - but it's essentially ceding the argument to the "gamers." there isn't a "gamer culture" that is being attacked by liberal outsiders who want it to change. there is a gamer culture where some people in the culture are making a claim about what gaming means, and some other people are making another claim about what gaming should mean. and it turns out that the latter ppl - those making the critique against "gamers" - are making the historically (and currently) valid claim: gaming is an inclusive medium that spans a diverse group of gamers - and games that aren't recognizing that aren't representing those participants.

xp forks i'm not going to click on all these headlines but are any of them by sarkeesian or quinn? bc these are the articles he's responding to:

Such articles appeared concurrently in Gamasutra (“ ‘Gamers’ are over” and “A guide to ending ‘gamers’ ”), Destructoid (“There are gamers at the gate, but they may already be dead”), Kotaku (“We might be witnessing the ‘death of an identity’ ”) and Rock, Paper, Shotgun (“Gamers are over”), as well as Ars Technica (“The death of the ‘gamers’ ”), Vice (“Killing the gamer identity”) and BuzzFeed (“Gaming is leaving ‘gamers’ behind”).

SJP = SJW i meant

being a gamer isn't like a passed-on social status or genetic right. these people, who are in the hegemony, are outright saying these people are not gamers and that they are biased against said group

being a gamer is like being a reader. it's a kind of very loose diverse social community.

gaming is a diverse medium, except for the fact that the games that sell huge-ass numbers in the /gamer website/ demo are all the same shit

I mean, these people are not getting all aggro about Wii Fit

the term does not mean what you think it means it is not like reader.

ok but lol that's the point. it's a fight between the /gamer website/ and the /gamer website/ demo. that's why it's ridiculous that this pseudo-journalist community that has been catering the same juvenile Maxim-for-video games community for years is suddenly declaring that this is the "death of gamers." even when killing "gamers" they're still taking the hegemonic right of deciding who constitutes the gaming community. they're the problem in the first place.

gamers are ppl who play games. gaming is the act of playing games. games of all kinds are only getting bigger and bigger in probably every demo, even the bro gamer demo. even the weird incest game loving kotaku demo i bet.

i've always found 'gamer' to be like 'foodie' in that it's a weird and contrived way to distinguish one's identity from someone who's merely an enthusiast for an activity that pretty much everyone does, and the only way to really do that is to be obnoxious about it, or actually do it to a rarified level. so i'm kind of ok with 'gamer' being used exclusively for self-identified precious jerkfaces and actual professionals who compete, or like Billy Mitchell, both.

Mordy, I feel like you are using linguistics to muddy what EVERYONE IN THE WORLD UNDERSTANDS IN THIS CASE to be the referent of "gamer".

Hence the reason that those very self-identified fucksticks feel that gamers are being attacked - they don't think any other kind of person gets to be in their club, so when outside voices intrude, they are in opposition to gamers or gaming culture. By default.

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Awesome. Who gives a shit?

Your argument is akin to saying that "Christian Identity" movements aren't bad because while it is a code for white supremacy, Christians having a sense of identity is totally ok.

No, my argument is akin to saying that "Christian" movements aren't bad because while some Christian movements use the term as code for white supremacy, Christians as a group are far more diverse than this limited usage implies (and that it in fact serves white supremacists to have "Christians" confused for "Christian Identity").

#notallMordys

Like if IS starts to fall a part it will make no sense to start writing articles about how this is the "Death of Islam," even tho acc to members of IS their brand of Islamism is the only authentic brand. Similarly, that some bro gaming culture is having a public tantrum doesn't really mean anything about gamers in general (as I believe the word is popularly understood outside this case), and writing articles about the death of gaming is similarly stupid. To your point that anyone discussing this issue knows what we mean we say "gamers," I agreed w/ that way above when I admitted my point was a nitpick in light of the broader conversation.

EZ, are you afraid no one saw your shit joke the first time you posted it?

Nope. But you obviously don't get it.

Seems to me that you are sidestepping the shitiness of this whole situation by falling back on the fact that these dudes are misusing the term "gamer", which is similar to sidestepping Christian identity awfulness by saying those dudes are misusing the term "Christian" so it looks like my point still stands, and in fact thanks for illustrating it for me.

I get it. You believe that in trying to explain why I think the term has been hijacked to refer to a niche culture within gaming at large, that actually I'm trying to deflect the accusations being made about gamers. I don't think it takes the critique away, though, to note that gaming is much more diverse than the community under discussion. It can strengthen the critique by reaffirming various gaming communities over the years who have been building diverse cultures while bro gaming has been in existence - it reminds us that ludic engagement in gameplay doesn't have to take the form that it does in a particular kind of hyper-expensive, violence-saturated, sexually offensive capitalist driven product.

That was xp intended.

There are tons of people on ILX that love video games but no one wants to claim the poisoned fruit of "gamer" other than you. Does that mean nothing?

Look, I work in an industry that has at least partially pulled itself out of this cesspool in the last 20 years, if somebody wants to write an article about the death of the "guitar dude" despite being technically a prime specimen of guitar dude I am all for it.

I don't know what that means. It's bizarre. SPECULATION: I think we have a bunch of people who probably until very recently thought of themselves of "gamers" and as this clusterfuck has blown up they've stopped identifying w/ the term bc they've started to believe it means something they hadn't thought they had signed onto. I think they believe that bc the discourse has been very effectively hijacked by so-called "gamers" and the /gaming media/. xp

Like "gamer" is a shit term, it's like claiming people who like food are foodies. I eat and enjoy food and enjoy cooking it, which is a normal pursuit and it's fine if someone thinks of me as a foodie or w/e but self-identification would be weird because it's something I do, not my identity

These dudes think they're Ryan Gosling in Drive as "the driver" when in fact their defining characteristic isn't playing games, it is being dickholes.

Yo Mordy how many gaming conventions have you been to

0

I have met gamers my friend, and you are no gamer

the hours i've spent in my life playing video games beg to differ

Wait hold up, now gaming media is to blame?

well duh - gaming media has been creating bro gamer culture forever. i remember reading the most sexist shit in gaming magazines when i was growing up. they taught that culture to their readership.

i wish i could remember the magazine i once bought in a train station that was literally Maxim for video games. i think the rating system was on a scale from zero to having a beer and a woman sitting on your lap. odious shit. like i know they didn't invent Duke Nukem, but there's no reason they had to identify so hard w/ the most juvenile part of the industry when franchises like civilization + sim city has spanned the history of video games.

That is

A - uncomfortably close to the shade these assholes are throwing
B - weirdly analogous to the Fox News "lamestream media" approach

These dudes use the term like a banner, how is gaming media to blame for that? Should they be inventing a new name for them?

Like you can read a shitload of books but until you join book club or write book reviews you are not part of "reader culture"

btw I bought every issue of "Video Games & Computer Entertainment" religiously and then subscribed to GamePro and later was all over some FPS websites circa 2000, which is where I am coming from

yes - they should call them bro gamers

The term is fucked, Mordy. You standing for "gamer" will change nothing.

i disagree - it'll be rehabilitated in a minute. ppl who play lots of games will want to call themselves gamers. they always have.